Incredible way Shayla Phillips found alive and well after 48 hours missing
Four-year-old Shayla Phillips has been found “safe and well” in southern Tasmania more than two days after she was reported missing, police say.
After going missing for at least 48 hours, Shayla Phillips has been found alive and well.
A major search operation continued on Friday morning to find the four-year-old that disappeared more than 40 hours ago.
Inspector Gavin Hallett said Shayla was found about one kilometre from her home in a “heavily wooded and very slopey” area.
“It seems like she had been lying down and stuck her head up and she was seen,” he said.
“It was the right place at the right time, had the SES volunteer being looking to the left and not the right we could have still been doing the search.”
The little girl with long brown curly hair was last seen at around 2.30pm on Wednesday in the backyard of a neighbour’s Stormlea Rd property in Stormlea while playing with their two dogs.
She was located just before 4pm Friday by an SES ground search party in a densely wooded and hilly area near Halls Rd.
She has since been taken to hospital for medical assessment.
“The first thing that we did was we reacquainted her with her mother and she’s been taken by ambulance just for an assessment at this point in time,” Inspector Hallett said.
“We’ve said all along this is a search and rescue operation, there was nothing to indicate at that time that anything untoward had happened, we knew that if we just kept pressing away we would find her.”
The area where Shayla was located was initially searched by air but due to the terrain did not yield any results.
“We’re dealing with a four year old girl. She wasn’t going to come to us, we had to find her,” Inspector Hallett said.
“We had to do that crawling on hands and knees to locate her, and that’s what the SES did.”
About 100 personnel from Tasmania Police, the Police Drone Unit, State Emergency Service, Westpac Rescue Helicopter and specialist dogs, as well as community members joined in the search for Shayla.
Rescue crews from intestate arrived on the Tasman Peninsula on Thursday night to help sweep the area.
Inspector Hallett on Friday said authorities worked 24/7 in the search.
Inspector Hallett explained on Thursday that Shayla’s mother Bianca went to check on her daughter after about 30 minutes but couldn’t find the girl or the dogs.
She searched her own home and neighbouring properties with a friend while they waited for police to arrive at the scene and assist in finding the child.
One of the two dogs made their way back to the home, while the second was seen by a helicopter about 800m away from they property at around 7pm on Wednesday.
A concentrated search in that pastoral area was conducted, with dense woodlands in the area scoured and four nearby dams “cleared” by police divers.
At the time, Inspector Hallet said Shayla was a “very healthy, happy young child” who liked to play hide and seek.
“There have been occasions where they haven’t been able to locate her and has been absent for about 15 minutes but this is obviously a lot longer than that,” he said.
The policeman said her disappearance was not believed to be suspicious.
“An indicator for us was that the dog was found in an area quite some distance away.
“If there had been some untoward activity, the dogs wouldn't have been gone. They would’ve been here.”
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